Posted on 07/12/2005 2:00:10 PM PDT by F14 Pilot
'There are no Muslim terrorists. There are terrorists," Father Paul Hawkins of St Pancras parish church told his congregation on Sunday. "The people who carried out these attacks are victims of a false religion, be it false Christianity or false Islam."
Oh, dear. "Britain can take it" (as they said in the Blitz): that's never been in doubt. The question is whether Britain can still dish it out. When events such as last Thursday's occur, two things happen, usually within hours if not minutes: first, spokespersons for Islamic lobby groups issue warnings about an imminent backlash against Muslims.
In fairness to British organisations, I believe they were beaten to the punch by the head of the Canadian Islamic Congress whose instant response to the London bombings was to issue a statement calling for prayers that "Canadian Muslims will not pay a price for being found guilty by association".
In most circumstances it would be regarded as appallingly bad taste to deflect attention from an actual "hate crime" by scaremongering about a non-existent one. But it seems the real tragedy of every act of "intolerance" by Islamist bigots is that it might hypothetically provoke even more intolerance from us irredeemable white imperialist racists. My colleague Peter Simple must surely marvel at how the identity-group grievance industry has effortlessly diversified into pre-emptively complaining about acts of prejudice that have not yet occurred.
Among those of us who aren't Muslim, meanwhile, there's a stampede to be first to the microphone to say that "of course" we all know that "the vast majority of Muslims" are not terrorists but law-abiding peace-loving people who share our revulsion at these appalling events, etc.
Mr Blair won that contest on Thursday, followed closely by Brian Paddick and full supporting cast. If "of course" Mr Blair and Mr Paddick and the rest do indeed know that "the vast majority of Muslims" do not favour terrorism, is that because they've run the numbers and have a ballpark figure on the very very very slim minority of Muslims who do? And, if so, what is it? 0.02 per cent? Or two per cent? Or 20 per cent?
And, if they haven't run the numbers, why do they claim to speak with authority on this matter? If it were just a question of rhetorical sensitivity, I'd be happy to go along with Mr Paddick's multiculti pap and insist that "Islam and terrorism don't go together" - events in Beslan, Bali, Israel, Nigeria, Kashmir, etc, notwithstanding. But the danger in separating "Islam" from "terrorism" is that it leads the control-freaks of the nanny state into thinking that "terrorism" is something that can be dealt with by border security, ID cards, retinal scans, metal detectors. It can't.
Terrorism ends when the broader culture refuses to tolerate it. There would be few if any suicide bombers in the Middle East if "martyrdom" were not glorified by imams and politicians, if pictures of local "martyrs" were not proudly displayed in West Bank grocery stores, if Muslim banks did not offer special "martyrdom" accounts to the relicts thereof, if schools did not run essay competitions on "Why I want to grow up to be a martyr".
At this point, many readers will be indignantly protesting that this is all the fault of Israeli "occupation", but how does that explain suicide bombings in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where there's not a Zionist oppressor for hundreds of miles? Islam has become the world's pre-eminent incubator of terrorism at its most depraved. Indeed, so far London has experienced only the lighter items on the bill of fare - random bombing of public transport rather than decapitation, child sacrifice and schoolhouse massacres.
Most of us instinctively understand that when a senior Metropolitan Police figure says bullishly that "Islam and terrorism don't go together", he's talking drivel.
Many of us excuse it on the grounds that, well, golly, it must be a bit embarrassing to be a Muslim on days like last Thursday and it doesn't do any harm to cheer 'em up a bit with some harmless feel-good blather. But is this so?
Why are we surprised that "Muslim moderates" rarely speak out against the evil committed by their co-religionists when the likes of Mr Paddick keep assuring us there's no problem? It requires great courage to be a dissenting Muslim in communities dominated by heavy-handed imams and lobby groups that function effectively as thought-police.
Yet all you hear from Mr Paddick is: "Move along, folks, there's nothing to see here." This is the same approach, incidentally, that the authorities took in their long refusal to investigate seriously the 120 or so "honour killings" among British Muslims.
Just as the police did poor Muslim girls no favours by their excessive cultural sensitivity, so they're now doing the broader Muslim community no favours. The Blair-Paddick strategy only provides a slathering of mindless multiculti fudge topping over the many layers of constraint that prevent Islam beginning an honest conversation with itself.
Unlike Malaya or the Mau-Mau or the IRA, this is a global counter-terrorism operation across widely differing terrain, geographical and psychological. We need to be able to kill, constrain, coerce or coax as appropriate.
Kill terrorists when the opportunity presents itself, as 1,200 "insurgents" were said to have been killed in one recent engagement on the Syria/Iraq border the other day. Constrain the ideology behind Thursday's bombing by outlawing Saudi funding of British mosques and other institutions. Coerce our more laggardly allies like General Musharraf into shutting down his section of the Saudi-Pakistani-Londonistan Wahhabist pipeline.
But the coaxing is what counts - wooing moderate Muslims into reclaiming their religion. We can take steps to prevent Islamic terrorists killing us, most of the time. But Islamic terrorists will only stop trying to kill us when their culture reviles them rather than celebrates them.
There are signs in the last week's Muslim newspapers, in London and abroad, that some eminent voices are beginning to speak out. At such a moment, Britain should be on the side of free speech and open debate. Instead, the state is attempting to steamroller through a grotesque law at the behest of already unduly influential Islamic lobby groups. One of its principal effects will be to inhibit Muslim reformers. Shame on us for championing Islamic thought-police over Western liberty.
Thought you might be interested!
Why is it that we have not heard from one Muslim cleric in the USA, not one Muslim organization in the USA, not one Muslim family in the USA denouncing these terrorist acts in London or against our soldiers and the Iraqi people. Until that happens, in my opinion, then Muslims in our country are condoning these acts of violence.
This is a time for good Muslim people to come forth and denounce these acts.
nick
Yes, Mark Steyn is always spot on the money. Thanks for posting this.
The poor deluded man.
Ping!
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/07/12/worldviews.DTL
http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-07-07-voa63.cfm
US Muslim Groups Condemn London Attacks
By VOA News
07 July 2005
U.S.-based Muslim groups have joined governments and organizations around the world in condemning Thursday's deadly bombings in London.
In a statement, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the attacks as "barbaric crimes," which it said "can never be justified or excused."
The group has said in the past that those who commit acts of terror in the name of Islam are betraying that religion's values.
In a separate statement, the Muslim Public Affairs Council extended condolences to the families of the victims and to the British people. It called the bombings an "attack against humanity."
Criky. I am sure getting tired of bozos letting Islam off the hook by including Christianity in their condemnations. An extremist Christian might give away all their possessions and live their life in servant paradigm...an extremist muslim believes in killing any non-muslim in an effort to bring the world under subjugation to Islam. The terrors WERE muslim terrorists even if this guy doesn't have the moral courage to say so.
islam IS HATE!
Where have these people been for the past three years? Frankly, I'm not impressed. I don't see letters to the editor colums from them or any organized statements that are reported in the press. I don't see demostrations like we saw from the young Lebanonese in major cities. There in this country reaping the benefits of our system yet not lifting a finger to help their people back home. Am I cynical? Yes. Those soldiers over there are like our family. Any person in this country should feel the same way.
Like I said above. I'm not impressed by these token gestures after London.
nick
Even Steyn hopes against all hope that there are "moderate Muslims". But where? And what else can we do except to continue to fool ourselves? Ship them all out to where they came from, when there are today thousands of mosques built in formerly Christian lands, allowed there by the elites running the secularist states who have looked at all religion as a benign 'opium of the masses'. When many (of the muzzlelimb fanatics) are citizens, unassimilated, of the Western countries? It'll take a revolution of the masses against the elites in their safe from terror academic, political and entertainment world cocoons. Rodeo Drive and the Presidents' alma matter campuses are still safe, aren't they? Who'd ever think of bombing country clubs or the Hamptons?
Daniel Pipes usefully estimates the Radical Islamicist population at 10-15% of Muslims.
While that's a relatively small minority, it is still more than ten million people who want to kill you or die trying.
Good moooslimes tell no tales!!!!
The only good mooslime is a ????
Kill A Commie For Mommie
Seven Dead Monkeys Page O Tunes
Well, we need to encourage the rest of the Muslim community to fight them!
OTOH, we are about one WMD away from the public requiring governments to:
"Kill them all and let Allah sort them out."
A nuke in Paris, Tel Aviv, Washington, or London would require the immediate overthrow / decimation of Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Possibly Pakistan if provenance were suggestive.
We have encouraged them for four years, and virtually nothing has happened.
Where are the mass arrests of the thousand of Islamofascists in Britain? Oh, that's right, they never happen because "moderate muslims" don't turn in the radicals. Wishful thinking and another dozen "Pretty Please" requests don't seem promising.
I recommend spies, bugs, dirty police work and armies as necessary.
>>
This is a time for good Muslim people to come forth and denounce these acts.
<<
But they did.
Both of them.
HELLO.... IS ANYONE AWAKE OUT THERE.
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